Shapeshifting Northern Lights Dance Over Alaska in Amazing Photos

by Nina Sen, SPACE.com Contributor | December 30, 2013 04:04pm ET

LeRoy Zimmerman sent SPACE.com this panoramic image of an aurora near Fairbanks, Alaska on Dec. 7, 2013. Zimmerman took about 500 shots in half an hour with two-second exposures about every three seconds using a Canon 6D camera. Credit: LeRoy Zimmerman

Dazzling auroras over Alaska take center stage in these spellbinding images captured this month by an amateur astronomer.

Photographer LeRoy Zimmerman took these stunning panoramic images of the northern lights near Fairbanks, Alaska, on Dec. 7. He snapped about 500 shots in half an hour, two-second exposures taken every three seconds, using a Canon 6D camera.

"Never had to move the camera once," He wrote SPACE.com in an email. "The aurora band sat in place overhead and put on a show. “It was the only aurora in the sky." [100 Greatest Night Sky Photos of 2013]

LeRoy Zimmerman sent SPACE.com this beautiful panoramic image of an aurora dancing near Fairbanks, Alaska on Dec. 7, 2013. Zimmerman took about 500 shots in half an hour with two-second exposures about every three seconds using a Canon 6D camera. Credit: LeRoy Zimmerman

The northern lights are triggered by charged particles from the sun (the solar wind) that interact with Earth's upper atmosphere. Earth’s magnetic field draws these particles to either the North or South Pole, resulting in aurora borealis, or northern lights, and its southern counterpart the aurora australis, or southern lights.